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There are over 3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) aged 50 and over living with HIV. HIV and combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) exposure may accelerate the ageing in this population, and thus increase the prevalence of premature frailty. There is a paucity of data on the prevalence of frailty in an older HIV + population in SSA and screening and diagnostic tools to identify frailty in SSA. Patients aged ≥ 50 were recruited from a free Government HIV clinic in Tanzania. Frailty assessments were completed, using 3 diagnostic and screening tools: the Fried frailty phenotype (FFP), Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) and Brief Frailty Instrument for Tanzania (B-FIT 2). The 145 patients recruited had a mean CD4 + of 494.84 cells/µL, 99.3% were receiving cART and 72.6% were virally suppressed. The prevalence of frailty by FFP was 2.758%. FFP frailty was significantly associated with female gender (p = 0.006), marital status (p = 0.007) and age (p = 0.038). Weight loss was the most common FFP domain failure. The prevalence of frailty using the B-FIT 2 and the CFS was 0.68%. The B-FIT 2 correlated with BMI (r = − 0.467, p = 0.0001) and CD4 count in females (r = − 0.244, p = 0.02). There is an absence of frailty in this population, as compared to other clinical studies. This may be due to the high standard of HIV care at this Government clinic. Undernutrition may be an important contributor to frailty. It is unclear which tool is most accurate for detecting the prevalence of frailty in this setting as levels of correlation are low.

C-reactive protein (CRP) levels are elevated following bacterial infections but may be attenuated by the IL-6-receptor antagonist tocilizumab. In hospitalised COVID-19 patients, tocilizumab induced a transient (

OBJECTIVES: The SD BIOLINE HIV/Syphilis Duo rapid test (SD BIOLINE DUO) is a dual rapid lateral flow immunoassay that detects antibodies to both Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Treponema pallidum (TP) “syphilis” via fingerprick whole blood. We evaluated the field performance of the SD BIOLINE HIV/Syphilis Duo test among two populations in Hanoi, Vietnam - men who have sex with men (MSM) and pregnant women. We also surveyed factors that influence participants willingness to test for HIV and syphilis. This test has the potential to increase HIV and syphilis screening in low-resource settings METHODS: Patients who received healthcare services at a sexual health clinic for MSM, and district antenatal care center in Hanoi, Vietnam were recruited for the study. Participants with HIV and syphilis were intentionally recruited for adequate test performance evaluation via convenience sampling. At each facility, venipuncture blood specimens were obtained for reference testing for HIV and TP using SD BIOLINE HIV ½ 3.0 and TP particle agglutination respectively. SD BIOLINE DUO was compared to the standard reference tests and sensitivity and specificity were calculated. We calculated 95% confidence intervals (CI) using the exact binomial method. We used conjoint analysis to identify test attributes that are associated with participant likelihood to seek HIV and syphilis testing. RESULTS: Of 280 participants, 100 (35.7%) were MSM and 180 (64.3%) were pregnant women. Of MSM, 17 (17.0%) were HIV-positive and 49 (49.0%) were TP seropositive. All women were negative for both HIV and syphilis antibodies. For HIV antibody testing, sensitivity and specificity were 100.0% (95% CI: 80.5% - 100.0%) and 100.0% (95% CI: 98.6% - 100.0%), respectively. For the syphilis antibody testing, sensitivity and specificity were 83.1% (95% CI: 71.0% - 91.6%) and 100.0% (95% CI: 98.3% - 100.0%), respectively. Potential for false positives, preference for one blood draw over two, and shorter wait time for testing results were the highest ranked attributes among participants willingness to test. CONCLUSION: The SD BIOLINE HIV/Syphilis Duo rapid test demonstrated very good performance in this field setting and participants preferred attributes that aligned well with this test.